America's smaller businesses are huge

Many folks look to the performance of the S&P 500, a collection of 500 of the largest public companies, as a baseline of the economy's health.

Despite the size and influence of the companies in the index, they aren't as giant when it comes to the workforce.

This chart from Deutsche Bank's Torsten Slok shows that S&P 500 companies employ only 17% of workers in the US. So of the 141.6 million people employed in America, about 117 million work for small or medium-size companies.

Slok also notes that while hiring by the S&P 500 has decreased dramatically so far this year, small businesses have increased hiring in 2015.